Our family took in the African Children’s Choir before we left for the lake for the weekend. What an amazing concert! It was packed half an hour before the concert started, and got very warm! Many, many families showed up with their Ethiopian kids and it was so encouraging to us. Even so, it was a bit teary for us because our kids aren’t home yet. Everyone was great and asked how far along our wait was. Having been there themselves, they knew how hard it was. One of my amazing friends Lisa and her family came with us. She said she remembered being at their concert the last time they were here while she was waiting for their referral. This time, their beautiful Emebet danced and clapped along with the music. What fun!
paperwork has started again
You’d think that we’d be tired of paperwork already, but this time we are very excited to work on it! Our social worker has already been contacted and has given us very positive support on our age change. She has been so supportive of our family throughout the entire process. When I called her she was excited to hear from us and fit us into her busy schedule within 10 days! (and that is working around the fact that we can’t see her during normal work hours) Our agency is in fact notifying the foster home that our ages are being changed. That didn’t seem to be hard to do. The paperwork will need to go to the Mantiba government for approval, but there again, our social worker thought it would be fast and easy as we had great reasons for choosing pre-schoolers instead of infants and toddlers. It has been a shift in thinking, but if anything it has made us more excited than before. We’ve had many friends and family members now tell us that they thought we should have done this from the beginning, but wanted to support us in whatever we decided. Thanks for not only being supportive, but confirming this move whole heartedly! (you know who you are!)
Change of plans May 18, 2008
After many discussions and more research, we have decided to change our ages on our referral! We will start the process this next week of changing our age from 0-36 months to 0-60 months. Our whole family is in agreement. We really feel led to adopt in this older age range. In Ethiopia 0-3 is the prime “adoptable” age. After three, the children have very little hope of being adopted. There aren’t long lines of parents waiting anymore, there are children ready and waiting for a family.
The process is a bit new to us and we are still waiting for CAFAC to confirm, but here is what we think will happen; our paperwork in Ethiopia continues along and we are still “in line”. (it won’t cost us any time to change) We need to see our social worker to have an addendum made to our file. (we would have to have a meeting with her in a month anyway, because our file is one year old) The Manitoba government and Ottawa have to approve this change. As it is one little change and not a whole file, we have heard this might go faster. (could be hearsay) In the past CAFAC has notified the transition house that we are changing our ages so that the director can start to look for kids for us in our new age range while all this paperwork is being done in Canada.
This will speed up our process considerably, but that is not why we are doing it. We felt that for us it was silly to wait in a long line for kids that everyone wants, when we would be so happy to have a three or four year old in our home! (Thanks to my niece Gracie, who is the cutest four-year old ever, who made us cry thinking she would be “too old”)
Even though this will speed things up, we still have to deal with the fact that the Ethiopian courts close for August and September. When they re-open there is a back-log of cases to be heard. So while we could have our referral quite quickly, chances are that we will wait longer to travel than most. But who knows? 🙂 This process is not for the faint of heart!!
More blankets to count the months! May 10, 2008
O.K. I feel quite proud of myself – I took the picture, downloaded it, and added it to my post without Dave’s help! For those that know me well, you will recognize what an incredible accomplishment this was! So here is a picture of all the blankets I’ve sewn while waiting on our adoption. All but the top two are donations for hospitals and orphanages in Ethiopia. The two larger ones are for our kids, when we pick them up!
This month has been quite hard on me. The wait seems like it will never end some days. Other days I think the time is flying by and I have so much to accomplish at work and home before I even think of leaving. I think these months are so hard because of the “silence”. We’ve done all the paperwork – it’s just lonely waiting. Our agency is great, but even conversations with them have slowed to zero because there is nothing to say. It’s just waiting. So to pass the time I sew blankets!
Ethiopia Bound 